Do you know Sengai’s picture of a frog? “If we can obtain Buddhahood by sitting zazen…” [laughs] the frog says. The frog has enlightenment [laughter]. You may laugh at the frog [laughs] who thinks, “I can attain enlightenment by my sitting posture.” You are laughing at him, but he may laugh at you. You may say, “Just by sitting, how is it possible to [laughter] attain enlightenment?” I don’t know which is laughing at which. So even the frog has enlightenment when he sits like this. We cannot laugh at him. But if we practice zazen in a cross-legged position in order to attain enlightenment, that is worse. You are worse than a frog [laughs].
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-01-21-BN as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. These posts are also on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. We are continually working on improving the quality of transcriptions of Suzuki's lectures. After a new "verbatim transcript" is made, we create a minimally edited version which is more readable. See the most recently completed transcripts at shunryusuzuki.com/n.
